The Project Gutenberg eBook ofSpacemen lostThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Spacemen lostAuthor: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil FinlayRelease date: November 20, 2022 [eBook #69393]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1954Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACEMEN LOST ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Spacemen lostAuthor: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil FinlayRelease date: November 20, 2022 [eBook #69393]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1954Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Spacemen lost
Author: George O. SmithIllustrator: Virgil Finlay
Author: George O. Smith
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release date: November 20, 2022 [eBook #69393]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Better Publications, Inc, 1954
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPACEMEN LOST ***
SPACEMEN LOSTA Novel byGEORGE O. SMITHIllustrated by VIRGIL FINLAY[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromStartling Stories Fall 1954.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A Novel by
Illustrated by VIRGIL FINLAY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromStartling Stories Fall 1954.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I
Over the hubbub and chatter came the brief warning wail of a small siren. The noise died as the people in the vast waiting room stopped talking.
"Your attention, please!" boomed the loud-speaker. "Passengers for Spaceflight Seventy-nine, departing for Castor Three and Pollux Four, will proceed to Gate Seven for ground transportation to the take-off block. Spaceflight Seventy-nine, waiting for passengers at Gateway Seven!"
There was a moment of silence, then a loud racket burst out as everybody started talking at once. There was only a small flow of people toward Gate Seven, almost negligible, because Flight Seventy-nine was essentially a cargo hop. In fact, this morning less than a half-dozen headed for the gateway.
Among these was a tall man, impressive in his blue-black uniform. A space commodore, no less. He carried the light bag of the woman who was beside him, proud and happy and eager-looking. But traces of some internal storm clouded the man's features, and as they approached Gateway Seven, the man's perturbation worked closer and closer to the surface until finally it broke through.
"You could still back out," he said.
"No, I couldn't," she said. Her own face clouded a bit.
"Yes, you could," he snapped.
She stopped ten or fifteen feet from Gateway Seven and turned to face him. She was pert and pretty in a traveling suit of gray; brand-new for this occasion. Her name was Alice Hemingway, but she would have swapped it in a minute to become Mrs. Theodore Wilson, even on a commodore's salary.
"Look, Ted," she said slowly. "We've been back and forth over this argument for a couple of months now. Can't you forget it?"
"No, I can't," replied Ted Wilson. "I don't like the idea of you taking to space."
"I do," she said simply. "I want to see these places you are always telling me about. I want to see 'em before I'm sixty. It's no fun listening to your stories, then having you trot off for three or four months on another jaunt while I sit home alone and wonder where you are and what's doing."
"But we—" He paused, thinking. "Alice," he said suddenly, "will you marry me?"
A welling of tears came then, but Alice blinked them back. "If you'd asked me that a month ago I would have said 'Yes,' with no stipulations, but right now I'll say 'Yes, as soon as I come back, if you still want me.' Understand?"
"Not quite."
"I want you to be dead certain that the reason you want to marry me is not to keep me from taking this spaceflight."
Ted looked down at her. "I'd really like to know if you accepted this trip just to force me into asking you," he said slowly.
"You'll never know," she said with a bright smile.
He swore under his breath. "I still don't like the idea of you trotting off to Castor Three with that old goat."
"Mr. Andrews? Old goat? Why Ted! You're jealous."
"I am."
"Good. Stay jealous. But don't be an imbecile. Mr. Andrews is merely my boss, not my lover. He has never so much as watched me walk, let alone made a pass at me. I couldn't think of him as anything but a boss."
"But up there—"
Alice shook her head. "Forget it, Ted. I'm still your girl, and I intend to stay that way. Even though it's smart for a girl to have a lover or two before she marries, I'm the old-fashioned one-man type. Virgin. No hits, no runs, no errors, and no one left on first base."
"Okay," he said sullenly.
She smiled up at him again. "Ted," she said seriously, "don't you see I have to go a-space? You've ducked marriage because you can't see two people living on a commodore's salary, and also with you flitting off and leaving me home alone. So you want to wait until you get your next boost. But that will get you stationed on some planetary post. I'll get one flight to Base, then be set down for years. Well, until that time I'm going to travel and see the interstellar sights. I want to see the Dark Column on Procyon Five, I want to visit the Golden Rainbow on Castor Three, and toss a penny into the Bottomless Pit on Pollux Four, and.... Well, I can do these things so long as Mr. Andrews wants me to travel."
"But—"
"Oh, Ted—please!" she cried.
She clutched at him and buried her face in his shoulder. He held her, then put a hand under her chin and lifted her face. He kissed her, not tenderly, but with more of a frantic striving for something beyond reach.
The siren wail lifted again and the loud-speaker boomed:
"Last call for Spaceflight Seventy-nine at Gateway Seven. Will Miss Alice Hemingway please proceed to Gateway Seven!"
Reluctantly she withdrew herself from her sweetheart's arms and turned to the gateway. Ted picked up her small bag and followed her.
As they reached the gate a smallish, nervous, wiry man with a clipped gray mustache eyed Alice crisply.
"Ah, Miss Hemingway, you're just in time," he said. He smiled thinly as he looked at Ted Wilson. "However, I presume the delay was justified. Commodore, I think the use of your handkerchief is essential."
Before Ted could reply, Mr. Andrews had walked through the gateway to the waiting spaceport bus. Alice turned back to Ted and held up her face. This time their kiss was less frantic, but also less personal. It was chaste, and brief, and proper. It promised for the future, but it did not give any part of that future warmth or passion as a down payment.
Then Alice came out of his arms and went through the gateway to climb into the bus beside her boss.
As Commodore Wilson turned away, the bus drove off along the road to the waiting spacecraft.
Commodore Wilson entered the base commander's office and smiled glumly. The commander, Space Admiral Leonard F. Stone, a man of about forty-five and as lithe and as hard as a man of that age could be, looked expectant. His command was exacting and just, but he was also human.
He said, "What's troubling you, Wilson?"
"Admiral," Ted Wilson said, "I know it is against the unwritten rules to discuss the matter of increase in rank, but I wonder if we mightn't break them for a minute or two."
"We might if there were proper justification. Why?"
"A commodore's salary is just a bit meager for marriage," said Wilson unhappily.
Stone's face clouded a bit and he nodded seriously. "I know," he said. "But there's a reason, Ted. We do prefer to keep our commodores single so long as they're in active flight service. So long as you are well-fed, well-clothed, and well-housed yourself, the monetary payment is sufficient to take care of your personal needs. I know it is not enough to provide for a wife on top of that. Of course, some men do. And others manage to marry well-to-do women."
"Mine is not well-to-do, but I don't want to make her do with less."
"Naturally."
"Then how about this rank business? I'm about due."
"You are."
"Then when can I expect it?" asked Wilson.
Admiral Stone looked at him determinedly. "You can hasten that process yourself, Wilson. By acting a bit more for the benefit of the Service than you have in the past."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"There's more to rank than merely following orders to the letter. Now, you've never disobeyed orders, and it has been obvious that when orders coincide with your personal ideas, you act eagerly and swiftly. But when orders are opposed to your pleasure you act at the last moment and follow them reluctantly along the thin outer edge."
"For instance?"
"For instance last November. You had front line tickets to the finish post of the Armstrong Classic, but you were ordered on a training flight around and through the Centaurus System, to last no less than ten days and no more than thirty, at your discretion. You returned in ten days and four hours, even though you couldn't see the end of the Armstrong affair. Then, last May you were ordered to Eridanus Seven, which is a remarkably interesting place as I recall from my early days. You got home barely under the wire. Twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours, forty minutes, and a few seconds. Follow?"
Ted nodded slowly. "I felt that my crew would appreciate my attitude," he said.
"Certainly. They did. Both times. They also appreciate your stalling in a stack-circle, waiting for that last half-hour to expire so they'd draw overtime flight pay. But you've got to remember, Wilson, that we are running the Space Service for the public weal, not for the benefit of the spacemen. A parent does not bring up a child knowing only the pleasant things of life. A balanced program of work and play is essential. I know that the Centaurian run is no picnic, but it is a fine training for spacemen. Now, that'll be all. I'm not criticizing you Wilson. I recall doing similar things myself years ago. It does draw a crew closer to their commander when he gives them consideration. But making them work makes them efficient, and they will also love a commander who mixes well his periods of pleasure with hours of hard work. Agree?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Fine," said Admiral Stone. "So now that you know, we'll watch you for a bit. If you come through, you'll get your increase in rank—and your girl." He smiled. "You're a good commodore, Wilson. But with a little work and application you could be brilliant. We need brilliant men. Remember that. Good-by and good luck, Commodore Wilson...."
His name translated from his native tongue, was Viggon Sarri. In medieval times he might have been called "Sarri the Conqueror" for his exploits, his conquests. But of course then it was the king, emperor, or caesar who led his own troops.
In these days the ruler sends out men of military might to fight his battles, and Viggon Sarri was not a ruler. His position was the equivalent of space admiral in the Interstellar Service, and though devoted to his own service, he was only a paid hand.
His home was far across the galaxy from Sol and the sprinkling of stellar systems colonized by human beings. Viggon Sarri had never met a human, he did not know that this section of the universe had any trace of sentient life. He was just out looking for new worlds to exploit, perhaps to conquer. A new district to colonize, perhaps, or a world of beings advanced at least to the point where the produce and manufacture of his homeland could be sold for metal.
Naturally, Viggon Sarri explored space at the head of several hundred ultra-fast and ultra-hard-boiled fighting spacecraft—fourteen big battle wagons, two fighter carriers each providing a hundred one-man space attack craft, and one hunter, a detecting craft. It was loaded to the astrodome with every device for locating evidences of anything from advanced races to enemy spacecraft.
Sarri rode in his flagship, one position ahead of the hunter. And so, when the detecting equipment in the hunter registered that some race in this sector of the galaxy was advanced enough to be using the power of the atomic nucleus, Viggon Sarri gave orders for his fleet to spread out in a big, flat dishlike formation, flatwise toward this section of the sky.
It came to as near a halt as anything can approach in deep space, and Viggon Sarri called a conference.
He sat at the head of the table, his two second officers at his left and right. They were equal in rank, Regin Naylo and Faren Twill. This irked them both, and for a long time they had been striving to rise above one another. But only Viggon Sarri knew which was listed in the sealed orders, to be opened only in the case of the death of the supreme commander.
At the far end of the table sat Linus Brein, commander-mathematician of the hunter spacecraft.
Viggon said, "Linus, what do we know about these people?"
Brein thought, then said, "Very little, actually. They use atomic power. They have discovered interstellar flight. They seem to have some interstellar commerce. They use the infrawave bands for communication across space. I would say, off-hand, that they may have colonized no more than a dozen planets, and are exploring perhaps a dozen more. I would also guess that their exploration is done by sheer go-out-and-look techniques."
"Why do you suggest that?" asked Viggon.
"Analogy. Their use of the infrawave is not highly developed. I doubt that they have planet-finding equipment. I have not noticed any attempt to use the infrawave as a detecting and locating means. Only for communication is the infrawave employed by them."
"I see. Any more?"
"Not at present," said Linus Brein. "We will collect more as our men pick up information and our analyzers compile data."
"Keep me posted," ordered Viggon Sarri.
He sat there in silence, a tall man with a thin face that looked wolfish. His ears were flat and distorted, to the human point of view. His eyes were glittery bright, having that shiny cornea characteristic of the nocturnal animal of Terra. He had six stubby strong fingers on each hand and a long double-jointed thumb. Each hand had two palms, fore and back so that the fingers could curl either inward or outward. His elbows were double, one bent in or locked straight, the other bent out or locked straight, as he moved.
Viggon stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. His eyes, roaming independently gave his features a bizarre look which his own race thought quite natural.
Finally he said, "Has anybody any suggestions?"
Regin Naylo said, "I say we attack as soon as we know more about them."
He felt confident. He believed that his admiral enjoyed swift and decisive action, and by suggesting it he hoped to show that his thoughts ran in the same channels as those of his commander.
Faren Twill said, "It might be better to make allies of them, rather than enemies."
Twill held the notion that Viggon Sarri's main motivation was to build and expand in the easiest, and most profitable manner. And he felt that careful negotiations might pay off better than invasion and strong conquest.
But in truth Viggon Sarri himself did not know which course to take. He was not above the use of force, if force were needed. Nor was he against the idea of peaceful negotiation, even the formation of an alliance. Which course he would take depended entirely upon what sort of culture this was, how the people reacted, and what they favored. For such knowledge he would rely on data collected by Linus Brein and analyzed by the mathematician's vast bank of computers.
Regin Naylo grunted in a superior tone. "They sound like an inferior race. Inept and primitive. Let's not waste time."
Faren Twill shook his head. "You want to barge in there with the projectors flaming and conquer them by force. That would be easy, but would it leave enough to make the conquest economically sound?"
"Can you sell anything to mice?"
Faren Twill grinned. "Cheese," he suggested. "Besides, an angry gang of rats can do in an elephant, you know."
"Chicken," sneered Regin Naylo.
Of course none of them had ever seen a mouse, a rat, an elephant, or a chicken. But on their homeland, a planet called "Brade," there were myriad life forms, just as on any inhabitable planet. The forms of animal life mentioned were similar enough to permit a free transliteration. "Chicken" also existed in its completely alien form.
But until the native tongue of Brade becomes common to Earthmen, this loose transliteration of their speech characteristics suffices to convey their meaning. Since their grammar bears no relation to any Solarian tongue, it must be converted rather than translated, or even transliterated. So if they sound like people of Earth instead of extra-solar aliens, that is the only way to convey their meaning.
"Twill is right," said Viggon Sarri. "We must be wary. This may be a communal culture, like that of the insect, ant, in which the individual is expendable so long as the nucleus is undamaged. In such a case suicide fighters would swarm over us, and against such we could not stand. If, on the other hand, this is a completely individualistic, or anarchic culture, we must call Brade for help. We would need a horde of space fighters to control the entire group." He looked at Linus Brein. "You will, of course, have their language analyzed?"
"We are working on it now. It is not difficult to connect the sound forms with the meaning, under known conditions and situations. But it is extremely difficult to make such analysis when we have not the foggiest notion of what situation is being described by the sounds. I—"
A winking light on the wall called his attention. Linus Brein touched a stud on an armlet. The tiny communicator said, in a thin, tinny voice:
"Commander Brein? Analyst Hogar speaking. The space-strain detectors have just picked up a violent response. The computer-analyzer bands report the following probability to at least three nines: That a space craft has foundered due to the failure of the warp-generator. Have you any orders as to our next moves?"
"Yes, Hogar. Record everything. Analyze everything!" He let the stud snap back into place, then said to Viggon Sarri:
"An ill wind blows, Admiral Sarri. Their misfortune may be our gain."
"It might indeed." Viggon nodded.
"I suggest that we send a fleeter out to seek survivors," said Regin Naylo.
"No," said Faren Twill. "We will learn more by listening to their communications and watching how they face this problem."
"What's better than a being able to interpret his own sounds?" snapped Naylo.
"Taking a little longer by doing it ourselves, and not giving them any warning that there stands another intelligent race not far offside. Why forearm them?"
"Right," interposed Viggon Sarri. "We watch from a distance."
Linus Brein stood up. "I'd best be going back," he said. "This language analysis may get deeply involved. I'd feel better if I could supervise it myself. May I leave, Admiral Sarri?"
"We'll all leave. This conference is over until more detailed information is at hand. My orders are: Take no action, but observe closely and critically. Dismissed, gentlemen. We'll all drink to success!"
Viggon Sarri pressed the stud on his armlet and ordered a tray of refreshments. Linus Brein did not stay for his share.
II
Spaceflight Seventy-nine took off, lifted on schedule by Pilot Jock Norton. Norton was a big man, rather on the lazy side, but a good pilot. If he had had any ambition at all, he would have owned his spacecraft, maybe a string of several, instead of being a paid space jockey.
But Jock Norton lacked the drive, or perhaps had never seen anything he actually wanted. He was a love-em-and-leave-em kind of guy who spent everything he earned on good times and luxuries. He spent no time seeking out the better pay loads as other pilots did, and so did not collect any of the fancy commissions for being a good businessman. He had gravitated to a standard contract type of job and with this he was satisfied.
His cargoes were invariably bid-basis job lots, instead of valuable merchandise with a delivery factor. He ran mail loads mostly—mail that could not, for legal reasons, be micro-microfilmed, transmitted by facsi-wave, or recomposed by infrawave at the receiving end. Legal contracts, documents, and the like, the one-and-only original of which must bear thebona fidesignature of both parties.
Norton took the spacecraft up, fired the warp-generator, and headed for Castor Three at about forty parsecs per hour. Then, with the control room on the full automatic, he went down to the salon, because it had been a couple of months of Sundays since he had been pilot-host to anyone as young and attractive as Miss Alice Hemingway. Most of his passengers had been businessmen. The few women had been wives of such businessmen, a bit on the dowager side, and therefore more boring than interesting.
But Miss Alice Hemingway was interesting. Not that Jock Norton favored her ash-blond and dark-eyed attractiveness more than he would have admired a redhead or an olive-skinned brunette. He favored all women under thirty who were properly rounded here and there—especially there—and who had clear-skinned faces with regular features.
That Alice Hemingway, secretary, was traveling with her boss made her even more interesting. Norton had cased Mr. Charles Andrews carefully and put him down as a Napoleon type, peppery and active, and probably well-to-do, but not personally attractive to the opposite sex. It was money, decided Norton, that bought a reasonable facsimile of affection to Mr. Charles Andrews.
It would be masculine virility, thought Jock Norton, that would offset the money of Charles Andrews and really bring a proper emotional response from the girl.
"Good morning," he greeted them from the last step of the ladder that led down from the control room.
"How do you do, Pilot Norton," responded Andrews.
"My goodness!" exclaimed Alice. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"Isn't what dangerous?" asked Norton, with a wide, lazy smile.
"Your leaving the ship to run itself."
"Not at all." Norton showed his superior knowledge. "Our auto-pilot is the best that money can buy and maintain. And after all, Miss Hemingway, there is little a pilot can do while we are in transit. The auto-pilot does the job from after take-off to before landing. In between, the human pilot relaxes and enjoys his space travel. So—may I build you a cocktail? Or maybe you'd prefer a highball."
"At this hour in the morning?"
Norton laughed and inspected his watch. "I admit that it is ten o'clock by Chicago time. But it is past midnight on Polaris Two at Minervatown. It's three A.M. in Leyport, Procyon Five. It's even three o'clock in London, Terra."
"Besides," said Charles Andrews curtly, "we're hard at work."
"Work?" exploded Norton loftily. "You're hard at work in deep space?"
"Certainly. Deep space or hard planet, work must go on. I did not get where I am by goofing off, Pilot Norton."
Jock Norton grinned. "All work and no play, you know."
"All play and no work is worse."
"It's more fun," said Jock, with a feeling that he was coming off second-best in this fool argument. "Look," he said, "everybody relaxes in deep space. It's customary. It's holiday."
"It's damn foolish." Andrews turned to Alice. "Miss Hemingway, what do you think?"
"I'm half-inclined to agree with you, Mr. Andrews. But you must know I'm thrilled to be a-space. I've never been off Earth before."
"Oh. Then I capitulate. Pilot Norton, will you give Miss Hemingway a space tourist's run of the ship, please?"
"Be happy to." Norton nodded.
He looked around the salon, from face to face. There were four others there, all of them watching with a blank sort of interest. Norton took a deep breath of inner cheer for his luck. All the rest looked as though nothing could be as boring as a tourist's run of a spacecraft. He made the gesture of asking, but all shook their heads.
Norton opened the small bar and set everyone up to cocktails. Then he said to Alice, "Now, let's start at the bottom and work our way up."
"Any way you say," she told him.
Andrews got to his feet. "I think I'll tag along."
Norton swore below his breath.
Alice walked between them as Norton explained the workings of the spacecraft. She found Norton a good talker, and his lazy manner of speech somehow managed to convey a lot of information that a more intense man would have flubbed, because of a greater preoccupation with facts.
Even Mr. Andrews seemed interested, although he had been a-space many times before, as a matter of business.
Norton explained the workings of the power pile in a much oversimplified way, showed them the various rooms of machinery for maintaining air and water and electrical circuits throughout the ship. As he had suggested, they started at the bottom, looking out through the below-hatch at the hull of the ship, where the misty blue corona flared down and back from the eight tubular drivers that thrust their blunt cylindrical noses down in a large circle, surrounding the after viewport.
Then Norton worked them aloft slowly, up through the room filled with water for the reaction mass, and hurled out from the throat of the driver tubes as a molecular-atomic gas so highly energized that it was not water, but nascent hydrogen and oxygen, completely ionized. The coronal flare below, he explained, was the recombination of the nuclei with their electrons in shells, and the partial recompositions of the gases into water.
He showed them the warp-generator that created the extra space field around the ship, nullifying every physical attribute of matter. Neither mass nor inertia remained, so that the thrust of the flare had no resistance against which to exert its force, resulting in a drive that violated the Einstein equations. Forward velocity reached terminal when the interstellar matter provided a tenuous medium against which the velocity of the ship found resistance.
He showed them the magnetic-mass detector that protected them against meteors, and explained that while the thing was primitive, it was the best that Mankind had. The infrawave was hopeless because it had an instantaneous velocity of propagation and was also nondirectional, and therefore neither direction-finding nor ranging could be accomplished with the infrawave.
But the magnetic-mass detector was not as hopeless as it looked.
He said casually, "There were a lot of tall stories back in the Early Twentieth Century about spacecraft filled with course-computing gear that measured the course of meteorites, then directed the spacecraft. A more practical study of any such device shows that any extraneous object that does not change its aspect angle is necessarily on a collision course. Ergo, any target that does not move causes the alarm to ring, and the auto-pilot to swerve aside." He grinned and added in a low voice, "We're as safe as if we were all in bed."
As his arm touched Alice's she realized that Jock Norton had been entertaining the idea of bed ever since this tourist's run had started. She smiled because it amused her. Jock Norton had made a snap judgment, probably because he had seen a lot of such shenanigans as man and woman playing employer and secretary before. She almost laughed at Norton, realizing that he was displaying all of his knowledge and his virility in the hope of convincing her that he was probably more fun in bed than the elderly Napoleon type with whom she was traveling.
She stole a look at Andrews, comparing the two men. She wondered whether Andrews had cottoned onto Norton's play and if he had, whether her boss found it funny or irritating.
As they walked along a curved corridor, she saw with some surprise that twice Mr. Andrews had lagged back a bit, then had come forward behind them to walk by her side instead of on the far side of Jock Norton. And both times Norton had quietly lagged back to circle her and step forward between them, explaining quietly that Mr. Andrews could hear his explanation better if he, Norton, walked between.
Alice was still wondering whether Charles Andrews actually held any off-trail notions about his traveling secretary when all hell broke loose.
First came the wild clangor of an alarm, and the automatic cry of a recorded order:
"Your undivided attention, please! This is urgent! You have eleven minutes from the end of this announcement to follow these directions. There has been a partial failure of the warp-generator. If this failure becomes complete, and the space field collapses, the effect will be that of precipitating intrinsic mass into the real Universe while traveling at some high multiple of the velocity of light. The spacecraft then will drop instantly below the speed of light but in doing so will radiate all the energy-mass equivalent to those multi-light speeds, according to the Einstein equation of mass and energy. It is therefore expedient that you repair to the lifeship locks and prepare to debark. The partial failure may or may not continue. If not, there will be no more danger. But in case of continued breakdown—"
The recorded announcement stopped abruptly as a louder alarm bell rang briefly. Then another voice from the squawk-box shouted:
"The warp-generator is failing! You have—"
A third voice came in automatically saying, "Eleven minutes," after which the second voice continued neatly, "to make your way to a lifeship and debark. Please do not panic. You have plenty of time."
"It's this way," Norton said anxiously.
"We'll find it," said Andrews. "I know this spacecraft type. Hadn't you better take care of your other passengers?"
Norton wanted to swear. It would have been so neat if Andrews hadn't insisted upon coming along on this tourist's run of the spacecraft. As it was, Norton couldn't quite bring himself to suggest that Andrews take care of the other customers while Norton himself took care of the girl. On the other hand, Norton had no intention of rushing off to take care of the others when they were probably being taken care of right now by the engineer-technician. He said that, and repeated it to give it force.
"This way," he said.
The announcer bawled, "You now have ten minutes!"
"Couldn't I get my bag?" pleaded Alice.
"Anything of real value in it?" asked Norton.
"Not really."
"Then we'd best leave it." Norton breathed a sigh of relief. Now she wouldn't find it more expedient to travel with the bunch upstairs.
He led them up a flight of curved stairs and around another curved corridor as the announcement howled:
"Nine minutes!"
The squawk-box said, in a more natural voice, "Jock? Look, I've got this section under control. How're you doing?"
"I'm doing fine, Limey. We're almost at the below-station lock."
"Be seein' you. Luck."
The announcement yelled:
"Eight minutes! You all have plenty of time. Remember, safety is more important that blind speed! Listen!"
The tremolo of an organ filled the spacecraft—vibrant, thrilling, brilliant music rising over thethrob, throb, throbof heavy bass, beating time just fast enough to keep feet moving briskly, but nowhere fast enough to cause panic or fumbled steps.
"Seven minutes!" came the cry.
Norton's hands closed on the space lock and he twisted the emergency handles. The inner door swung open ponderously and they walked past the portal. The lock swung behind them and the dogs went home.
"Six minutes!" came a less resonant call from a smaller loud-speaker in the lock.
Jock Norton handed Alice through the small space lock of the lifeship, boosted Andrews in after her, then climbed in himself.
"Five minutes!" was almost cut off as the lifeship space lock swung shut.
"Four minutes!" came as the big outer space lock was cracked.
Norton's hands on the lifeship controls moved and the little spacer leaped out of the doorway.
On the infrawave they heard the call of "Three minutes!" then "Two!" and finally the announcement, "You are now all debarked and are in places of safety. The distress call has been sent constantly from the moment of danger. Sit tight and make no foolish moves until help comes. Do not look to the rear, as the explosion of a collapsed field generator is brilliant enough to sear the eyes—"
The voice stopped abruptly as there came a wave of sheer heat. The ports on the side of the lifeship flared blue-white, and the spacecraft bucked as though it were being driven into a heavy gas cloud.
"What was that?" blurted Andrews, picking himself up off the heaving deck.
Norton shrugged. "That was Spaceflight Seventy-nine going to hell in a wicker basket," he said.
"But why? We weren't hit by anything."
"You can bet not," Norton said cheerfully. "Don't you know about spaceflight factors? The Einstein equation?"
Andrews eyed the pilot coldly. For several hours the younger man had been explaining all sorts of things in a condescending manner, showing off his knowledge in a field that he knew far better than any one else present. This was galling to the financier, who was used to paying mathematicians and physicists small change.
"I don't have time to clutter up my mind with equations," he told Norton coldly. "I usually pay people to have them explain these things to me. So go right ahead."
Norton's thick hide sloughed off the insult because he was still the bright one.
He said, "The original Einstein equation of mass and energy shows that as the speed of light is reached, the mass reaches infinite mass. This is an obvious impossibility, since even the total mass of the Universe is not an infinite mass. So when a body traveling at faster-than-light is hurled into the real Universe by the collapse of the warp-generator, for the barest instant it is actually traveling beyond light. This causes it to assume some unknown factor of mass that no physicist has been able to theorize yet, but must be the impossible infinity-plus. At any rate, the fabric of space is twisted, as if by a gravitational field so powerful that the field wraps up around itself and forces the mass into a Universe of its own."
"You're talking gibberish."
"Sure I am. But you find me someone who can explain this effect without talking like an imbecile and I'll buy you a good cigar."
"All right—go on. What is supposed to happen?"
Norton shrugged. "If a volume of space is removed from the structure of space—this is more gibberish, Andrews, believe me—then there must be an instantaneous flow of space back to fill the gap. Now, for God's sake don't ask me why empty space has got to flow into a place where some empty space has been removed. I've always been taught that nothing from nothing leaves nothing. Maybe nothing from nothing leaves less nothing than before, but that sounds as silly as the rest of the whole fool argument. At any rate, every time a warp-generator collapses, the same twist occurs in the structure of space. There have been billions of bucks' worth of equipment shot into nothingness by the White Sands Space Academy in the last hundred years, just to see if someone can come up with a logical answer."
Andrews said coldly, "All right. So now what do we do?"
"We sit it out," Norton said cheerfully.
"Doing what?"
"Decelerating to a velocity below light. We still have our ship's intrinsic to get rid of, you know."
"Why don't we keep on?"
"Because this is a lifeship and not a spacecraft. We have only enough space power to pull ourselves down safely, with some reserve, and then we use the reserve to emit our distress call. Cheer up. We got off safely. This will be a breeze."
"It will? And why are you so happy about it?"
Jock Norton smiled, then said the one thing that removed all and any chance of Alice Hemingway ever looking upon him as a desirable character, virile or not.
"Spaceman's insurance," he said. "For spacewreck, one thousand cold clams. For debarking with every passenger within a reasonable distance of my position at the time of distress, an award of one thousand more frogskins each. This is not so much an insurance award as it is a reward incentive for a spaceman to do the right and proper thing. Then, for every lonely hour adrift in deep space, from the time of distress until we are collected safely, one hundred fish. This should add up to a neat sum by the time we are picked up. Tommy Walton and Joe Lake drifted for eight hours and collected. Sure, we're sitting pretty and we'll be rescued in due time. So let's settle down and take it easy."
Andrews said, "I suppose you've spent half of your time a-space hoping for some disaster so you could collect a neat pile."
"Not quite that bad. This is likely to be sure rough before we're collected. But it does pay off. So let's relax, huh?"
Alice was breathing a silent prayer to Commodore Wilson that he make it a quick run. She was sick and tired of spacing already....
Admiral Stone said, "These are your orders, Wilson. You are to take your squadron out to Cube X-Z-Fifty-nineteen, District Forty-seven. You'll have to comb it inch by inch."
"I'll comb it millimeter by millimeter," asserted Wilson. "Miss Hemingway was on that spacer."
"Don't do anything foolish," warned the space admiral. "Just remember that you're a flight commodore and not a full squadron commander yet. You have your orders."
"I have. And I'll bring them back. Both lifeship loads."
"Then get going. Remember that every hour decreases their chances of a safe rescue. Luck, Wilson. Spaceman's luck!"
"Correct, Admiral Stone."
Less than a quarter-hour later, Ted Wilson's flight of twenty-five swift light spacecraft went barreling up out of Chicago Spaceport and into that region of the sky called Gemini....
Viggon Sarri sat in the main control cabin of the hunter spacecraft, quietly waiting for Linus Brein to finish some involved equations in logic symbols. When the long string of symbols had come to what looked like a satisfactory conclusion, Brein looked up.
"Any success?"
"Oh, yes indeed." Brein nodded. "Of course our interpretations of their speech is only symbolic at this point. But this much we know. This series of sounds—" he snapped a switch on the side of his desk and a wall speaker delivered a series of what sounded to them like sheer gibberish—"connotates as follows: Voice A has called for contact with any receiving station. Voice B has responded, informing A that he is ready to receive. Voice A then delivers a running account of the disaster, delivering his computed position, vector of travel, and space coordinates. I've untangled some of their tongue." Brein replayed the recording and stopped it after the first passage. He parroted the gibberish, "'Spaceflight Seventy-nine calling Distress.' That, Viggon, is interpreted in our tongue as 'Identification Number So-and-so calling to announce disaster.'"
He let the recording run a bit then said, again parroting the gibberish, "'Chicago Spaceport, Interstellar Service to Spaceflight Seventy-nine. We read you five by five, go ahead. What is your distress?' We interpret the reply as, 'Base of Operations has received your distress call. Please elucidate.' What follows defies identification, Admiral Sarri. Until we can meet one of these people and learn more of their physiognomy, we cannot hope to unravel their numerical system. Damn it, we don't even know how many fingers they have."
"Or," suggested Sarri drily, "whether they might have stopped counting on their hands."
"Indeed." Linus Brein nodded thoughtfully. "However, not long after the reception of this distress signal, the entire infrawave band seemed to fill up with all sorts of signals, all of them repeating the sounds that we assume are the space coordinates of this foundered spacecraft."
"Indicating that this is not a completely anarchistic or communal, insect-type culture. The individual is important."
"I would say so."
Regin Naylo smiled. It would have been an odd-looking facial grimace to an Earthman, for it turned the corners of his pencil-thin lips down and furrowed the skin of his head between the gleaming eyes and the low, ragged hairline.
Viggon Sarri said, "What do you find so amusing?"
Regin replied, "If they are individually important, then the culture finds the individual important, as opposed to the insect-type which wouldn't mind losing a few billions so long as the inner hive is intact, or the anarchistic culture where the loss of a unit is not even noticed, because every one of them is so preoccupied with his own affairs that he can take no time to consider the next man."
"Right. So what?"
"I say let's hit 'em while they're all occupied in tracking down the survivors of this wreck."
Faren Twill grunted sourly, "Ever try to interfere with a dog and her pups? You get bitten whether you mean good or ill. If you care for my opinion you'll ... Or do you give a damn?"
"Go ahead."
"I say we just slide in there quietly and collect the lifeships. Then, later, we can go in boldly and establish our superior position."
Regin Naylo shook his head superciliously. "I say we should hit 'em with all we've got and establish our physical superiority. Look, Faren, either way this gang of subhumans is going to end up in some form of servitude to us. Let's make it the quick and dirty way and save manpower. Besides, what can they possibly have that we want?"
Twill shrugged. "Any subject race is a good market."
Naylo laughed. "I'd rather shove it down their throats by taxation. Then we'd collect without having to give them a string of uranium beads for exchange."
Faren Twill asked Viggon Sarri for his opinion.
Viggon said, without changing expression, "There are races that will not abide the idea of collaboration, and there are races that either revolt or die under any superior government. It has been my lifework to expand the Bradian culture, one way and another, across the galaxy. When we finish with this problem here, another world—in this case another series of colonized worlds—will enter one of the forms of economic relationships with Brade. Whether we blast in and smash them, or ooze in and coerce them quietly; take them over, or hail them as an ally."
"Ally?" roared Regin Naylo scornfully. "This bunch of primitives who haven't even got an infrawave detector?"
"Ally?" snarled Faren Twill disgustedly. "This people who cannot protect their spacecraft from warp failure?"
Viggon Sarri held up his doubly-prehensile hand. "Either of you may be right," he said. "But remember that we do have time. So we'll wait until we know more about their basic character before we take any course. Go consult Linus Brein. Watch his computations and his evaluations. Come back when you have more complete data for your own evaluation."
Naylo and Twill left together.
Viggon Sarri called Brein on the ultra-infrawave.
"Linus? My headstrong youths are coming over to look at your data. Like any other kids they know everything, but dammit, like a lot of kids one of them may be right. Maybe I'm overcautious. So give them all the data you have, and let them evaluate it. I'll happily pin a medal on one of them if he's right and I'm wrong. Okay?"
Linus Brein agreed.
III
Under the temporary command of Commodore Theodore Wilson the space squadron sped out into the uncharted wastes of the sky on the true line toward Castor. Slowly, as the squadron flew, its component spacecraft diverged in a narrow cone so that the volume of space to be covered would fall within the scope of the detection equipment aboard each ship. Computers flicked complex functions in variables of the laws of probability, and came up with a long series of "and-or-if" results.
Toby Manning, Master Computer for the squadron, sympathized when Wilson showed the latest sheaf.
Wilson grunted, "This is no damn good at all. It sort of says that the lifeships will be wherever we find them."
Manning nodded. "Like the problem of catching a lion on the Sahara Desert. You get a lion cage with an open door, electronically triggered to close at the press of a distant button. Then the laws of probability state that at any instant there exists a mathematical probability the lion is in the region of the cage. At this instant you shut the door. The lion lies within the cage, trapped."
"Stop goofing off. This is no picnic. Have you any idea of how many square light years we have to comb?"
"Cubic light years, Commodore Wilson."
"Cubic. So I'm sloppy in my speech, too? Look, Manning, all we really want from you is the overall conic volume in which the lifeships must lie. You know the course of Flight Seventy-nine. You know the standard take-off velocity of a lifeship. The forward motion plus the sidewise, escape velocity, produces a vector angle which falls in the volume of a cone because we don't know which escape angle they may have used. We can pinpoint the place of escape fairly close."
"Yeah, within a light year. Maybe two."
"And we know that the lifeship will reduce its velocity below light as soon as possible."
"Naturally."
"So somewhere on that vector cone, or within it, is a lifeship—two lifeships—traveling on some unknown course at some velocity considerably lower than the speed of light."
"We've located 'em before. We'll locate 'em again."
Wilson shook his head worriedly. "That's a lot of vacant space out there. Even admitting that we have the place pinpointed, the pinpoint is a couple of light years in diameter, and will grow larger as time and the lifeship course continues. Or," he added crisply, "shall we take a certain volume of space and assert that a definite mathematical probability exists that the survivors lie within that volume?"
"Sorry, Commodore. I didn't mean to be scornful."
"Well, then, you'd better set up your space grid in the coordinate tank and we'll start combing it cube by cube."
"Correct," said Toby Manning.
The "tank" was not really a tank. It was a stereo projection against a flat glass wall at one end of the big Information Center Room below the bridge section of the flagship. Wilson went there some time later to watch the bustle as the tank was set up to cover the segment of space they intended to comb.
Even looking at the thing required some training. The plotters and watchers wore polaroid glasses to provide the stereo effect. Through the special glasses, the tank looked like a small scale model of this section of the sky. Castor and Pollux and other nearby stars were no longer pinpoints on a flat black surface, but tiny points of light that seemed to hang in space, some in front of and some behind the position of the screen itself.
Behind the glass screen, a technician was carefully laying a curve down on a drawing table with a pantagraph instrument. As he moved the pencil point along the curve, a thin green line appeared in stereo, starting close by and abruptly, and leading towards the dot labeled Castor.
The loud-speaker said, "This green line is the computed course of Spaceflight Seventy-nine."
A red knot was placed on the line.
"This is the approximate point of explosion."
Wilson asked, "Is that nominal or is that placed on the minus side?"
"The spot is placed to give the maximum factor of safety."
"Good."
"Now, after considering the probable velocity of escape from Seventy-nine, which would be a lifeship leaving the mother vessel at a ninety-degree relative course at full lifeship speed, we find a vector combination of velocities and courses that diverge from the main course."
From the red knot another line went out at a small angle to the original course, thin and red.
"But because we have no way of knowing what the axial attitude of Seventy-nine was at the moment of escape, the volume of probability now becomes a cone."
The angled red line revolved about a green course line describing a thin cone, its base pointed toward the star, Castor. As the line revolved about the axis of the cone, it left a faint residue behind it, which became a thin, transparent cone.
Manning said, "Our field of operations lies within this cone."
Someone running the projector went to work. The scene expanded until the thin red cone filled the screen and seemed to project deep into the room, its apex almost at the eyes of the watchers. Then a polar pattern appeared across the cone near the apex, a circular grid marked off in thin white lines, each line numbered, each area or segment, marked with a letter.
Down the room where the cone was larger, another grid appeared similarly marked.
Manning went on, "We cannot tell, of course, at what point in the collapse the survivors made their escape. We know that the automatic circuits begin deceleration as soon as the warp-generator shows signs of failure, the hope being that the spacecraft will fall to a safe velocity before the field collapses completely. Therefore escape could be made at any velocity between forty parsecs per hour, if they escaped before the deceleration began, or at normal under-light velocity, which might take place if the spacecraft had succeeded in dropping to safety before the field collapsed. However, in that case, there would have been no explosion and our space wreck victims would have remained in the spacecraft, or returned to it as soon as they saw it was safe. Therefore, integrating the probabilities outlined here, the survivors must lie between the planes of maxima and minima, representing escape at maximum forward velocity and minimum forward velocity. Here, gentlemen, is your search grid."
The rest of the stereo-field went out, leaving the white lines of the grids. Lateral lines now appeared to connect intersections of the fore grid with the corresponding intersection of the aft grid.
"We are here."
Tiny discs of purple dotted space before the small end grid. The discs were flat-on to the grid and represented the maximum distance for space detection of matter.
Wilson felt something touch him on the arm. He turned. A tech-operator standing there had a bewildered look on his face.
"Yes?" said Wilson.
"I'm puzzled, Commodore. Suppose we don't find them in a long time. Won't that far grid have to be pushed back?"
"No," Wilson explained wearily. "The function of a lifeship is to get its occupants down below the velocity of light and then coast. Since that grid represents a total distance of about ten light years, they'd have to be floating for ten years at the velocity of light to make it. Any normal speed, over a period of weeks, would hardly appear long enough to cover the thickness of one of the grid lines."
"Ten light years!"
Wilson nodded and repeated. "This is no picnic." He turned from the tech-operator to the planning table. "Unless someone has a better suggestion, we'll set up a hexagonal flight pattern with a safe detector overlap and start by cutting a hole down through this grid volume along the prime axis. Anybody got any other suggestions?"
Space Captain Frank Edwards shook his head. "Not unless someone has improved on theManual of Flight Procedures," he said.
"Okay then. Here we go."
Commodore Wilson leaned back and watched the grid as Edwards got on the ship-to-ship and gave the operational orders. The little discs rearranged themselves slowly into a hexagonal lattice with their edges overlapping, then the flight began to move forward into the grid, running down the line of axis.
Somewhere inside of the cage made by the white lines a lifeship was drifting, a sub-sub-microscopic mote alone in a volume of space so large that light would take ten years to traverse the volume from top to bottom.
Wilson shook his head and took off his polaroids to brush his eyes. The stereo-field collapsed flat against the glass screen and became a meaningless jumble of lines. Wilson put his glasses back on hastily.
Captain Edwards said softly, "Take it easy, Ted. We'll find her."
Wilson nodded. "I know. But I can't help thinking how rough it must be."
"Why?"
"To take her first space flight and get involved in a blowup."
"It will be an experience she'll never forget, but it shouldn't be too hard on her. It isn't as though she were completely alone, you know."
"No, I suppose not. She probably got out with anywhere from two to eight others. A lot of those were—well, not real spacemen, but at least they were regular space trippers. I—"
A detector alarm rang and everybody jumped to the alert. Edwards barked an order and one of the flight-techs darted off toward the launching deck. There was no point in stopping the whole flight, for any detection of matter would be investigated by one-man scooters. If a lifeship should be found, an infrawave call would bring the search flight hurrying back.
This was not it. The flight-tech reported a small clutter of pebbles and frozen gas. Probably a comet on its long, cold, dead swing near aphelion.
And the search went on....
Charles Andrews snorted angrily and growled, "It's damned inefficient, that's all I have to say."
Pilot Jock Norton shrugged. "We're alive."
"But why can't we pack on some power and get going somewhere?"
"Because this is a lifeship and not an interstellar spacecraft. I told you that before. D'ye expect a lifeship to be as big as the carrier?"
"Don't be an imbecile."
Norton towered over Andrews. "Don't be too bright, Andrews. Ships don't founder once in a green-striped moon. The function of a lifeship is to protect the customers until help can arrive. Our storage bank held enough quick-power to counteract the speed of the lifeship, with a safety factor. We've a small accumulator cell for temporary storage. It ain't pheasant under glass and brandy, but we'll neither starve nor die of asphyxiation. We're alive and healthy. So just wait it out. I told you that, too."
"I don't like it."
"Do I sound as though I did?"
"You seem to," Alice said reproachfully.
Norton gave her a bland smile. "I didn't intend to imply that I was in love with this clambake. Sure, it's a rough situation, but there's little point in looking at the black side."
"How long will this take?" she asked.
"Maybe a couple of days," he said easily. "Maybe as long as a week. Maybe even more. But we'll be all right."
"At a hundred dollars per hour," sneered Andrews.
"It ain't hay."
Andrews pulled a long pale cigar out and lit it with a flourish. "Norton, tell you whatIthink of a hundred dollars per hour. I'll take that week you mentioned as an outside limit and if you can do something to get us home before that date, I'll pay you one thousand dollars for every hour under that week."
"Nuts!"
Andrews said firmly, "Miss Hemingway, witness this, please. Do something brilliant right this moment, Norton, and you'll collect seven times twenty-four times one thousand dollars. Now that's what I call not-hay."
Norton growled angrily, "If there was anything I could do, I'd take you up on that."
"There probably is, if you'd only try to think."
"I'm the space pilot," Norton pointed out. "And I'm telling you there is nothing we can do about it."
"All right. Forget it. Let's have something to eat."
"We don't eat for an hour, Andrews."
Charles Andrews puffed on his cigar. "Why not?" he asked softly.
"Because we've got to conserve. It's in the book of rules."
"Rules are made to be broken."
"Not space rules. And I'm still skipper, you know."
"No matter how—" Andrews was going to say "incompetent" but he stopped short as Norton got lazily up out of his chair and came forward. Andrews realized he could push Norton just so far, then the pilot would lose his laziness and begin getting violent. Andrews could not stand up to violence. He was not big enough. He was not young enough.
Alice said calmly, "Stop it, both of you! You'll just make trouble for all of us."
Norton sat down again. Doggedly he said, "We'll eat in an hour."
Andrews turned to Alice. "Miss Hemingway, are you, perhaps, a bit hungry?"
She shook her head quickly. "Frankly, I couldn't get it down and keep it."
"Then perhaps in an hour," said Andrews. "I was only thinking of your comfort."
Alice squirmed. Both of them were, in their own way, fighting to control the situation. Andrews had just oozed out of the indignity of having an order or request countermanded. Norton had just ignored an implied insult.
So long as they struggled, quietly, nothing would result but well-rubbed nerves. But if open conflict broke out it might get rough indeed.
IV
Faren Twill looked across the table at Regin Naylo. They were alone, and finally Twill voiced the thought uppermost in both of their minds:
"This waiting is ridiculous, Regin."
"I agree. In fact, the only point upon which we disagree is the method. I say hit them hard, and with finality. You want to make an equal-to-equal alliance with them."
Faren shook his head. "Not really," he said. "No real alliance can ever be possible between stellar races. The alliance I had in mind would be patterned on the relationship between mother state and protectorate. We supervise their laws, control their commerce, and apply a small but adequate taxation to pay us for our service to them. Tariffs and duties to be set up for a beneficial economy in our favor, and yet low enough so that they can continue operating, only mildly limited. That sound sensible to you?"
"I think it can be carried out more efficiently than that," Regin Naylo objected thoughtfully. "First we collect the lifeship nearest us, maybe both of them. We sweep down along the line of search and wait in battle pattern. Why, we can probably collect their entire fleet without firing more than a couple of batteries. Then we have the survivors broadcast on the blanketing infrawave that we are applying the rules of space salvage and that redemption of their fleet is to cost some nominal fee—er—say ten metric tons of uranium, nine-nines pure. After which we take their captured fleet to the seat of their government and take over. Then we are in a real position to make demands. None of this simple taxation and commerce control. None of this mother state and protectorate. This will be conqueror and vanquished."
"Suppose they fight back?"
"With what?" asked Naylo sarcastically. "Guided torpedoes and A-heads? Faugh!"
"They may have—"
"Bet you a hat. If they haven't been able to use the infrawave bands for space locating and detecting, they wouldn't get to first base discovering the magnus forces."
"You realize," said Twill, "that you're setting up a pattern of violence that may never be resolved?"
"No matter how you set up the meeting of cultures, you've started a pattern of violence that can never be resolved. I say make 'em realize right now that they are clobbered. And if they want fight, we'll give it to 'em."
Twill growled, "Not too long ago you were cautiously admitting that elephants can be beaten by a pack of determined rats."
"Until they put out more than that squadron of twenty-five spacecraft, they're no real pack, compared to our task force."
"You may be.... Hush!"
The door opened. Viggon Sarri looking refreshed and alert, greeted, "Good morning. You've heard the latest?"
"What latest?"
"We've probably located the destination-star. From one of the large stars along the flight path of the original spacecraft there has formed a second search squadron of twenty-five spacecraft. The infrawaves are filled with calls back and forth, coordinating the search pattern."
"How are they doing?"
"Depends," replied Viggon Sarri, with a grin. "Poorly, if you mean that their success looks imminent. But excellently, if you mean their technique. They're really covering space like a blanket, slice by slice. But they started on the wrong slice."
Viggon's armlet buzzed tinnily and he said, "Yes? Go ahead."
"This is Linus Brein. We have more of their language analogued."
"I'll be right over." To his second officers Viggon said, "Want to come along? This may be interesting."
Naylo shook his head. "We've a bit of a problem to haggle over. We'll be over to Brein's bailiwick later."
"You might be missing something, but it's your decision."
As soon as the door was closed behind Viggon, Naylo said, "I wonder if he is getting chicken."
"Don't let him hear you say that."
"I won't. But haven't you wondered?"
"Maybe," said Twill. "But it figures. Viggon Sarri has had a long and successful career. He has expanded our realm more than any other one man in history. He will go down in history as a valiant hero. He does not care to spoil a good record."
"Hah! You agree, then."
Twill nodded soberly. He sneered, "Valiant! Hero! Sarri, the Victorious! Eyewash. What's so glorious about conquering races that fight back with slings and spears? What's so heroic about mowing down a flight of airplanes or turning A-heads back on the senders? But now that we have come upon a race that really has space travel developed to a fine art—even though they have not exploited it much—Viggon wants to wait. He's been pushing over children. Now that he's come up against a half-baked adolescent, he's afraid."
"What do you suggest?"
Twill eyed Naylo soberly. "One of us is due to succeed the great Viggon Sarri," he said flatly. "It may be you and it may be me. It will, however, be the one who decides properly how to handle this race."
"All right, then," Naylo grunted. "But it may be neither of us." He scowled. "Unless you or I can talk the venerable gentleman into action at once."
"Right. Let's get started."
Naylo grinned. "I hope you won't mind working as my second officer, Faren."
"You should see the day, Regin. I'll have you reporting to me before we get home."
But beneath the banter was an undertone of dead seriousness....
Commodore Ted Wilson eyed the search grid unhappily. Out of the center one thin hexagonal hole had been taken. It left such a lot of space to be combed.
The infrawave receiver in the Information Center was alive, and chattering with data and information and orders. Finally came a call for Wilson, from Flight Commander Hugh Weston from Castor.
"Weston here, Ted. How's it coming?"
"We've completed our first crossing. Nothing but a comet and a rather insignificant gas cloud."
"We're approaching you. Any suggestions?"
"Let's make contact and carry this out together instead of running at cross-purposes."
"Meaning?"
"No independent searching."
"I think you're wrong," said Weston.
"But we can do a better job of coverage if we combine all forces into one big comb."
"We could," replied Weston. "But do you realize that you'll probably leave huge holes in your search grid?"
"That's the point. I know we will. After about the fourth pass, we'll not be too sure of where we are. God, how I wish we had some method of pinpointing this absolute nothing! I wish the infrawave could be used as detecting and ranging."
"Make that double. But since we haven't got it, I suggest that we form behind you. There'll be a third squadron from Pollux as soon as Wally Wainright can get into space with his gang. I expect there'll be more, too. We'll need 'em all. Out in this featureless void, we don't really know where we are to any degree of accuracy. At least not the kind of accuracy needed to find a thing as small as a spacecraft."
"Lifeship."
"Lifeship, spacecraft, both Godawful minute when lost in a few cubic light years of space."
"I still say we should combine."
"I still think you should clean out one channel and let us take the next."
"Can't see it, Weston."